For a self-proclaimed bunch of alpha dudes, the Trump base sure is hair-triggered. Armpit-hair triggered! Add now to the extensive list of Bud Light, M&Ms being unfuckable, rainbows, Latinos in line at the DMV, and tampons in unisex bathrooms: the existence of Doug Emhoff’s daughter, Ella.
Whatever for? She is a cisgender, apparently heterosexual woman with a boyfriend, GQ senior fashion writer Samuel Hine. She has the most traditionally feminine interests ever: fashion, and knitting. She’s got a degree from Parsons, has her own knitwear line, and is literally a model, with a contract with IMG. She’s walked the runway for Proenza Schouler and Balenciaga. She made the Secret Service hang out at Paris fashion week and go to the Met Gala, which sounds way more fun than watching Eric snort glue. When it comes to first kids and fashion, Ivanka was a plastic knockoff handbag, and Ella is the real deal.
But Ella’s look doesn’t always make certain chuds’ peepees hard, and that makes them mad! Spoiler alert, people who hate women hate women no matter what they do, or look like, or wear. You can even be pretty, blonde, and MAGA, like Caitlin Upton, and misogynist assholes like JD Vance will still torment you just for the hell of it, and blame you for not laughing it off. Which literally happened last week!
As Brooke Binkowski pointed out here recently, “there’s nothing women can do to make ourselves more palatable to people who already hate us. They hate us for just being, like, womanly at them.” Or not womanly enough! Or womanly, yet unfuckable. Or fuckable, yet a woman!
So anyway, here’s what white supremacist woman-hater and Project 2025 contributor Richard Hanania had to say about Ella Emhoff on Twitter:
“Ella Emhoff being a part of the first family has the potential to radicalize American parents. I’m for women living the lives they want, but this is pretty much the nightmare scenario for most people with a daughter.”
WTF does “radicalize American parents” even mean? Insist their kids get into fashion and start a knitwear line? Ya got me.
He added: “Tattoos on women are generally disgusting.”
Said the eugenics-loving white nationalist.
THIS ONE!
Chimed in others:
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“Is that a man or woman? I can’t tell.”
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“These are the inevitable fruits this rootless, malignant, anti-natural spiritual filth begets.”
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“She decided to dress like she was having a bud light & a smoke on her break at the rural gas station”
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“Ella Emhoff is extremely unattractive. Just calling a spade a spade, because any sane person would admit to it. Only a troubled person puts tattoos on their skin that looks like a kindergarten child doodling”
Emhoff got “transvestigated,” of course, by a Tweeter calling themselves “Patriot Mama.”
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“I feel like that is a transitioned boy. Can anyone find a childhood picture of this person? Adam’s apple, large hands and all.”
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“100% Male.”
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Tweeter Just_Mindy: “Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter looks like she is ready to assassinate a former President tonight” (referring to Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks).
Twitter fashion expert Derek Guy Tweetsponded to Hanania, which apparently humiliated him to the point that he hid the response, ha.
Which is true! Bizarrely, like JD Vance, Hanania seems to wear a lot of eyeliner, as in this screenshot from one of his videos. Very specific gender performance for thee, but not for me?
Anyway, this targeting has sucked for Ella Emhoff. She ran a public knitting group, Soft Hands Knitting Club, and was forced to cancel it due to safety concerns from assholes. She posted to TikTok, “The smartest thing is to just hold off until things calm down. But uh, yeah, it has been amazing working on this and meeting all of you and has just felt so special to just build this little community, and I’m going to keep working on ways to make it more accessible and keep — keep building it while I’m not able to properly teach and host these.”
Then she crocheted a big chunky basket with her dog.
As Amanda Marcotte wrote in Salon, these batshit-crazy attacks could backfire, though. At least you’d hope so. Thirty-seven percent of American women have tattoos! And it gets clearer every day, how the MAGAs don’t just hate women, they hate fucking everything. They are miserable, angry people who do nothing but grievance-grift. It’s all they’ve got, and it’s a fucking drag.
The end!